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How to Help Your Elderly Relatives Keep Their Home Organized

As seniors age, the mundane, daily tasks that most of us take for granted become increasingly burdensome. Elderly individuals may suffer from debilitating, chronic illnesses that prevent them from performing simple routines, like cooking or doing the laundry.

Fortunately, seniors who have loved ones nearby can depend on their kindness. Here are a few tips to help your loved one unclutter at home.

Designate a Place for Everyday Essentials

The senior in your life may experience normal, occasional forgetfulness. To prevent the stress associated with locating everyday items, like keys, wallets or cash, designate one convenient place to store these items. Your loved one will have an easier time locating such daily use items that are stored in a familiar spot. Plus, organization helps seniors feel more in control of their lives.

Prepare Meals In Advance

Cooking appears relatively easy, until arthritis and pain in the joints prevents standing for long periods of time or even turning the knobs on the stove. In instances like these, caregivers can help their loved ones prepare meals ahead of time. Cooking nutritious meals a week in advance, sealing them in containers and freezing the food until its ready for consumption lifts a heavy weight off your loved one’s shoulders.

Seniors may not be physically able to fulfill the responsibility of cooking, but they can help with minor tasks associated with cooking. When older individuals can lend a helping hand to the weekly meal preparations, they’ll experience feelings of joy in both the assistance and companionship you provide.

Manage dietary restrictions using a convenient method for keeping track of a grocery list. A food list can be simply notated in an electronic form, such as a computer document, or jotted down in a paper notebook.

Stay On Schedule with a Calendar

A large-print calendar is an important tool for helping your senior loved one stay on schedule. The senior in your life can easily refer to it for reminders about doctor’s appointments, medication management and social or exercise activities they attend. Help your loved one hang the calendar in an obvious spot, so he or she can glance at it daily without forgetting! Keep a pen handy, so new activities can be added immediately.

Seniors also find using a list to manage daily activities to be enormously helpful. Several post-it notes scattered around the house are unhelpful and contribute to disorganization. Rather, designate one spot for all to-do notes. Such a list can be an electronic one, such as an Excel spreadsheet or cell phone, a calendar as mentioned or a traditional paper notebook. Use whatever your loved one feels most comfortable with.

Declutter

A clean, clutter-free home is safe for a senior individual, especially one who suffers from mobility issues. If your loved one uses a walker, for instance, it becomes important to remove extra items that block the most-frequented areas of a home. Decluttering exits and entrances should be given extra attention, so that your loved one can exit and enter the home in emergencies without obstruction. A senior’s home is one of the safest places in which he or she can reside. It is important to keep the home clean to impress upon your loved one a sense of autonomy and empowerment.

Manage Medications

Keep handy a list of the medications your loved one takes. In the event of a medical emergency, this list of medicines can be provided to emergency services, like paramedics, nurses and doctors to help them treat your loved one. Experts even suggest posting the list of medications to a refrigerator or near the front entrance in the case of emergency personnel needing to enter the senior’s home for critical care.

Another tool that helps seniors manage medications is the pill container that displays the days of the week. It’s easier for seniors to remember if they have or have not taken their daily medications by referring to a labeled pill box.

Keep a Contact List

Important contacts should also be kept in an obvious place. People who will need to know about your loved one’s condition should be included. These can include people such as family members, doctors, therapists, friends or spiritual leaders. You can include such information as the contact’s name, phone or email as the preferred and easiest method of contact.

Help with Pet Care

A senior may enjoy the company of a pet, like a cat or dog. Pets are an equally important part of the family. To keep on top of pet care, invest in an automatic pet feeder, so your loved one doesn’t forget to feed his or her beloved animal. You may wish to use a large-print calendar to remind the senior when to bathe the pet or take the pet to the vet for routine care.

Aging can be a pleasant process, especially when organization is included in one’s schedule and daily life. Although many seniors experience forgetfulness, the help of a loved one is invaluable and decreases the angst of memory issues. As part of your loved one’s care, you can choose to offer extra help in the form of professional elder care services. When you’re away at work or from home, you can trust a local homecare service provider like Assisting Hands Home Care to check in on your loved one, prepare nutritious meals and offer medication management assistance.

Assisting Hands Home Care employs highly skilled home aides to compassionately assist seniors in the comfort of their own home. Seniors don’t have to leave their familiar surroundings to experience the benefit of an extra hand. Aides help with local transportation, taking your loved one to the post office, to exercise classes or on grocery shopping trips before preparing a fresh meal at the senior’s home. Home aides can also provide pleasant companionship when your loved one lacks adequate social outlets. Assisting Hands Home Care in Hinsdale, IL is a reliable and trusted elderly care service provider loyally serving the senior populations in Hinsdale, IL and the surrounding communities.